The Stirrings of War
The Third Reich on a Roll
Austria and Czechoslovakia
 majority of Austria’s 6 million people
were German
 March 12, 1938: Germany marched into
Austria unopposed
 about 3 million German-speaking people
lived in the Sudetenland, western border
region of Czechoslovakia
 September 30, 1938: Munich Agreement
signed: gives Sudetenland to Germany
 appeasement?
Europe on the Eve of WWII
German Offensive
 conflict over
Poland
 two-front war
 August 23, 1939:
Germany and
Russia sign a nonaggression pact
 also sign an
agreement to
divide Poland
Joseph Stalin
Poor Poland
 September 1, 1939: invasion begins
 blitzkrieg tactics
 element of surprise
 overwhelming force
 fast tanks
 powerful aircraft
 September 3, 1939: Britain and
France declare war on Germany
 Western Poland claimed by Soviets
Slow Start…
 Maginot Line: system of
fortifications along the French
eastern border
 Stalin began annexing Baltic states:
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
 Hitler began taking over other
nations in Europe
Allies Encounter Trouble
 Italy joins the Axis Powers
 France
 invaded through the Ardennes
 German occupied northern France
 Nazi-controlled puppet government in the
south
 Charles de Gaulle sets up a government-inexile in England
 Britain
 London: bombed every night for 2 months
 Battle of Britain: Royal Air Force (RAF)
defeated German attacks in the skies above
Britain
Charles de Gaulle
Winston Churchill
Holocaust
 systematic murder of 11 million people
across Europe, more than half of whom
are Jews
 many Jews tried to leave Germany but
few countries would accept refugees
 1939: German ocean liner St. Louis
passed Miami
 740 of the 943 passengers had U.S.
immigration papers but were not allowed to
disembark
Holocaust con’t
 “Final Solution”
 policy of genocide
 forced relocation into ghettos
United States prepares for War
 Neutrality Act of 1935
 outlawed arms sales or loans to nations
at war
 Neutrality Act of 1939
 “cash-and-carry”
allowed warring nations to buy US
ammunitions as long as they paid cash and
transported them using their own ships
The Neutrality Acts brought
Americans into war.
A. True
B. False
Axis Powers
 Germany, Italy, and Japan sign a
mutual defense treaty: Tripartite
Pact
 designed to keep America out of war
as a two-front, two-ocean war would
be inevitable
The Axis Powers included the
Soviet Union.
A. True
B. False
Election of 1940
 Roosevelt runs for an unprecedented
third term
 victory as the Democrats proclaim
he kept us out of war
“Great Arsenal of Democracy”
 March 1941: Lend-Lease Act
 America would lend or lease arms and other
supplies to “any country whose defense was
vital to the United States”
 June 1941: Hitler invades the Soviet
Union
 United States lends supplies to the Soviet
Union
 German response: U-boats
 wolf packs: groups of 40 submarines
patrolling the Atlantic to attack supply ships
The United States sold weapons
to warring nations.
A. True
B. False
FDR Plans for War
 1941: Atlantic Charter
 meeting between Churchill and
Roosevelt
 pledged the following:
collective security
disarmament
self-determination
economic cooperation
freedom of the seas
FDR and Churchill wanted all nations
to have self-determination.
A. True
B. False
Make it Stick
 Was the United States really neutral
before the attack on Pearl Harbor?